Priceless

~~~

When I woke up that morning I was expecting that I would find Stephen lying beside me, instead of Garrett. But well, as I had stated, it was Garrett who had his arm casually draped over my waist, and not Stephen. It made me wonder why that was the case, because I clearly remembered that it was Stephen I'd slept beside with the previous night.

I carefully pushed Garrett's arm away as I sat up and looked around. Everyone was asleep, quite chaotically might I add, as Kennedy had his arm over Pat's chest, Josh was sprawled on the floor with his mouth open, and the like. It was only Jess who looked peaceful as she slept on the couch with her hands clutched tightly under her left cheek.

My gaze soon moved to Stephen, who was sandwiched between Brian and John Go, but my attention was moved to Tasha who was standing a few feet away from them, when she cleared her throat. I looked up at her wondrously, and she had a stern look on her face. She tilted her head towards the kitchen, as if asking me to go there. Not knowing why, I just stood up and followed her as she began walking to the Gomez’ kitchen.

“What’s up, Tash?” I asked as soon as she stopped walking. She turned to me, still with that look.

“Bailey, do you know what you’re doing?” she asked in a low voice, careful enough not to wake up anyone from the living room. Her voice was strained with worry for some reason.

I was confused with her question. I really had no idea what she was talking about. “Tasha, wha—”

“You and Stephen have been acting like a couple for the past few weeks, Bails. Do you really not notice that? And I’d have no problem with that, really, because I ship you two—except you kind of are in a relationship with somebody else, and that complicates things, don’t you think?”

My mouth fell open at that. I wasn’t expecting her to lay it out like that, because for one thing I never thought that Stephen and I acted couply at all, but now that she mentioned it…it might have been somewhat true, since we were inseparable that Halloween Party and well, last night, and the phone calls and texts sufficed when he was away. Plus there was that something I always felt whenever he was around, or whenever I talked to him and such.

But I wasn’t expecting anyone to point it out. Well, John might have joked or teased about us a few times, but it was John. Tasha was different. She was the kind of girl who was pretty much right about everything. Erin had told me that she was actually the first to notice that there was a specific way Jess looked at Kennedy.

“Tasha, there’s…” I racked my mind for the right words, “There’s nothing going in with Stephen and me.” But I really didn’t trust myself at the moment, so I wasn’t even surprised when Tasha scoffed.

“Yeah, well I kind of see that he likes you and you seem to have the same feelings for him,” she said. “So you can’t say that there’s nothing going on between the two of you, Bailey. Because quite frankly, I think there is. So you might wanna reconsider this whole torn-between-two-lovers thing before it gets worse, piece of advice.”

“We’re just friends,” I choked out, not knowing what else to say.

I watched as Tasha sighed deeply and slowly walked over to the fridge. “Well, believe whatever you want to believe, Bailey,” she said. “But just so you know, someone will get hurt in the end.”

I didn’t answer anymore and thankfully, I didn’t have to, because Erin and Jess had already walked in, both girls rubbing their eyes.

“Morning,” Erin said as she yawned. “So, Jess, wanna tell us about you and Special K over there?”

I drowned out the conversation as Tasha’s words repeatedly ran over my head. Someone was bound to get hurt…I just didn’t know who it was gonna be.

We spent the rest of the day just teasing around and eating when the others woke up, and although I wanted to detach myself from Stephen, I couldn’t help but keep myself around him. So I sat through Tasha’s few secret knowing looks at me as I tried to focus on just…bonding with Stephen.

~~~